Marty Bregman Reflects on the Influence of Dino De Laurentiis

Photographed at his Los Angeles home, with his wife, Martha, and two daughters, by Sam Jones. Film veteran Dino De Laurentiis died this morning at the age of 91. A native of Italy, De Laurentiis began producing films there and was able to lure over international stars like Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn before he moved to the U.S. in the 1970s. With an oeuvre that encompassed hundreds of films, his work ranged from classics like Fellini’s La Strada and to the cult classic Barbarella and collaborated with directing greats like Sidney Lumet and David Lynch.De Laurentiis’s films continue to have their place in American cinema. Veteran producer Marty Bregman worked with him on the classic Serpico, which remains influential to filmmakers. “It was one of the first cop films that wasn’t a shoot-’em-up. Most police officers never see shots fired,” Bregman told VF Daily.

Throughout his career, De Laurentiis was a link to the Neo-reolist glory days of Italian cinema—an icon whom no less than Sofia Loren herself memorialized on Italian television Thursday. A showman known for the grandiosity of both his failures and his successes, De Laurentiis anticipated the rising globalization of the film industry at a time when the old studio system was breaking down. His pioneering use of international co-productions to get his grand films made has, today, become standard business in film. He was also allegedly a tough negotiator, the kind of larger-than-life personality that makes for much disputed and much enjoyed showbiz legend.Â According to Meryl Streep, De Laurentiis, speaking in Italian to his son, dismissed her as too ugly for his remake of King Kong. The precocious Streep shot back at him in perfect Italian. (De Laurentiis denied it happened this way.) Deadline Hollywood claims that agents would only deliver their clients’ screenplays to Dino once they could see a check with their own eyes.

Above all, the De Laurentiis name was a reminder to contemporary corporate Hollywood of the grandstanding flair that used to characterize the film business. The De Laurentiis bungalow on the Universal lot was a transit-place for Italian filmmakers, where strangers were welcomed with a cold Peroni to catch the latest Italian soccer match—as long as they were willing to root for Forza Italia.